July 2003 2003

Hello everyone,

The second part of our shooting in Madagascar has been just as spectacular as the first part. Leaving the South and Fort Dauphin, we have headed for the bay of Diego-Suarez, at the northern end of this large island. I had spent a few months in that bay -almost as wide as the bay of Rio de Janeiro - on board my first sailboat, Om at the end of the seventies.

Then, at the term of a short stay on very magical island, Tsarabanjina, which I have visited several times since that time, we have met with my friend, pilot Michel Louys, to whom I owe being one of the first ones to discover, in 1991, the fabulous region of the Tsingy mountains of Bemahara, with their infinite numbers of rocks, lying in line like a million cathedrals ; a few years later, French adventurer Nicolas Hulot has dedicated various issues of his « Ushuaia » magazine to this region, one of the planet's most extraordinary.

This time, we have flown over other remarkable sites, the beautiful Mitsio Islands and Nosy Hara, close to Amber Mountain. The bay of Morombe, known as Madagascar's Ha Long Bay, the west coast, down to Majunga, including the impressive -Red Tsingy- , an immense eroded zone whose colors seem to come from Mars. The Tsingy of Namoroko and those of Bemaraha, of course, with a little excursion on board a dugout canoe on the river Manambolo.; and finally the area of Morondava end Belo sur Mer, with their immense forests of Baobab.

Finally our pilot brought us over a region I had never heard of yet, the Makay, a vast chain of steep mountains, whose strange shapes make it look like a giant brain open to the sky... Fabulous movies, western or science-fiction could be shot in such extraordinary settings!

This journey to Madagascar already seems long past to me, as I have spent three weeks editing the next film, « The most beautiful island in the world », due to be published in November, with images of the most beautiful islands in the world It's to film these images that I am taking a plane again today to film an Island off California's coast, my favorite atoll in the Tuamotus, and islands at the northern end of New Zealand and in South east Asia. I will tell you about it in my next letter !
As they sa in Madagascar :

Veloma (bye bye)!